Chemung County looks to increase internet access to residents

Monday, August 28th 2017, 11:34 PM EDT by Brandon Menard

ELMIRA, N.Y. (WENY) -- Chemung County is working on increasing internet access for residents and will need your help to gather the data.

"We're now at a phase where we really do need to do a survey of the community," said Deputy County Executive, Mike Krusen. "Both residential as well as commercial and see what access problems we may have, what types of problems people may be having with speed for broadband, so we have a better sense of what some of the next steps are that we need to take to build out that platform across the entire community."

The Broadband Aggregation and Adoption Campaign is taking steps to determine what can be done to enhance internet access in Chemung County.

Beginning September 7th, officials are asking residents to fill out a five-minute online survey, which will include a speed test.

"So this will give us an opportunity to make sure we understand where all the broadband is, how the public-private partnership can be strengthened and how we can make this a better service for all our residents," said Krusen.

Earlier today, we asked our Facebook followers, through a poll, to weigh in on what type of internet provider they have.

A quick sample shows that seventy-five percent of people in Chemung County have cable or fiber.

While ten percent are using only cellular data.

A specific concern for those using cable or fiber is speed -- which could affect their children's education.

"We hear a lot from the schools that students, when they go home, don't have connectivity and aren't able to do their homework assignments and engage in research they're supposed to be doing as part of school," said Krusen. "We also hear from businesses that they have some problems with the speed of their broadband connections."